Law of Effect

Synonyms

Associative learning; Operant conditioning; Reinforcement

Definition

The Law of Effect is one of the basic laws of learning formulated by Thorndike. It states that a behavior followed by appetitive consequences will tend to be repeated in the future.

Introduction

Edward Lee Thorndike published an experimental work in 1898 that not much later was explicitly defined as the Law of Effect, as Thorndike stated in his book Animal Intelligence (Thorndike 1898, 1911). In this work, Thorndike addressed three relevant topics in learning: the comparative role of learning between humans and other animals, the experimental methods employed to investigate similitudes and differences in behavior between species, and, finally, the Law of Effect (Lattal 1998). All these topics were focused outside the anecdotic method for animal reasoning, as Thorndike effusively defended.

The formulation of the explicit Law of Effect could be seen as a legacy from Darwin’s evolution theory (Postman 1947)....